This invention relates to a method and system to handle large volume of e-mail received from a plurality of senders and generate suitable response intelligently.
With an increase in e-mail usage there is a need to add powerful features to e-mail tools. E-mail usage is likely to increase at a phenomenal rate. This includes personal and official mail. With increasing mail volumes, users will feel the need to use more powerful e-mail tools. Some of the problems that are likely to be faced by users in the near future is:
1. Handling an enormous amount of mail.
2. Retain quality of mail response for all the mails. Typically it has been observed that
a. Mail response to mails read at the end of a day is poor in quality of content.
b. Mail response to mails after the first 50 odd mails decreases steadily in quality.
c. Human fatigue and urgency during office work also take their toll and sometimes users tend to be arbitrary in handling mail not giving the right attention at the right place.
This leads to a lot of problems in professional and personal scenarios.
The impact of this could be so far reaching especially in very influential and top positions (technical or management) that in a professional environment it could also lead to huge financial losses.
So far no serious study has been done on the impact of arbitrary treatment of electronic mail on the productivity, effectiveness and balance sheets of companies and the solution that would alleviate some of its effects. With a splurge in dot.com companies, and a present 160 million global users, e-mail usage is likely to assume gargauntan proportions and it is likely that in the future companies would appoint e-mail screeners to screen and prioritize mail. It is estimated that 500 million users would be hooked to the net by 2003. Add to this the growing intranet and extranet usage which is also likely to increase with e-business. Presently the members of senior management in large organizations who handle high volume e-mail already have their secretaries to help them handle mail.
In fact 90% of time spent by a manager in any industry is in communicating (including meetings, telephone calls, mail), in the coming years there is going to be major shift towards mail usage especially in non-IT industries where the emphasis of communication is going to shift strategically to electronic mail.
With burgeoning e-mail quantity, there is a need to have special focus on the content of e-mail. E-mail usage is likely to become monotonous, ubiquitous and last but not the least extremely time consuming due to large volume. Consequently a great deal of conscious effort needs to be put into maintaining the quality of e-mail content especially in a business scenario. Arbitrary e-mail usage in an e-business scenario could lead to catastrophic effects. On the other hand high quality e-mail content with richness and relevance is likely to have a very positive impact on an e-business.
E-mail being a human activity so far, is therefore riddled by human problems like fatigue, lack of concentration and lack of time. There is a dire need for e-mail tools, which can alleviate the problems described above.
Let us consider the existing scenario in a well connected company.
While receiving large no: of e-mails:
1. The number of e-mails could be sufficiently large that key individuals may not have the time to browse through the same and generate replies for each of them.
2. While replying to a plurality of senders the user seldom remembers the a is significant contents of the mails sent by these senders over a period of time while composing the reply. Whatever little the user recollects is limited by his/her memory of the said detail. The absence of this takes away the richness and relevance of contents. Sometimes irrelevant content inclusion by oversight or poor memory leads to further needless mail exchange apart from bandwidth expense and other image/goodwill/business damages. Precious time is anyway lost in the process.
Presently mail handling is done by:
a. Reading every single mail and replying to mails separately. This can become really cumbersome, tiring and time consuming especially if the number of related mails received is in the tune of hundreds or thousands. The quality of replies also decreases as the number of mails increases in quantity. A modest estimate of the amount of time spent by an individual on mails is discussed below.
b. As far as richness of content is concerned there is no systematic method used to lookup the relevant information from previous mails. This leads to understatements, misrepresentations, approximations, misunderstandings and sometimes leads to needless mail exchanges. In a business scenario this also leads to potential business loss.
An E-mail Usage Survey:
An e-mail usage survey was conducted on 20 members of a junior technical group on a normal business day in IBM Global Services India (P) Ltd. Following was the finding.
Assumptions:
1. Lotus notes, Netscape mail, Unix mail and all other kinds of mail were included.
2. One-liners are one-line messages per mail.
3. Small messages would contain 2-10 lines per mail.
4. Medium length messages would contain 10-100 lines per mail.
5. Long length messages would contain 100-500 lines per mail, including attachments.
As can be seen from the above only 5 of 14 mails were needed to be replied to, which is 36% of all mails received.
Approximately 36% of total mails received were sent anew.
Approximately 64% of all mails received were read but not replied to. Assuming the % distribution shown above we get:
This a very modest estimate.
Managers spend 90% of their time communicating (e-mail, telephone and meetings) and therefore the time spent by them on e-mail is much more than what is seen above. Senior management spends much more time in handling mail.
Extrapolating the above figure of 28 minutes for every 14 mails we get the following data.
Some recent attempts at solving these problems are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,948,058 and Japanese patent laid-open publication (Kokai) nos. Heisei 6-162085, Heisei 2-170642 and Heisei 4-351134. However, all these patents are limited in the scope of their solutions, as none of these utilize the power of available technology in the form of expert systems. Furthermore, none of these patents addresses the issue of generating replies to the received emails automatically.
The object of this invention is to provide a method and a system for handling large amount of mail efficiently, effectively and intelligently including automatic generation of responses using an expert system.
To achieve the said objective this invention provides in a computing system a method to handle large volume of e-mail received from a plurality of senders intelligently, by automatically processing each email based on a pre-determined classification system and stored information, said method comprising the steps of:
receiving and sending the electronic mails,
parsing the electronic mail header to capture keywords for the purpose of identifying the sender, the subject and specific key words and/or phrases,
parsing the electronic mail body including attachments if any, for keywords and/or phrases for purpose of categorizing the e-mail for response,
storing the said received emails in a personalized email database (PED),
analyzing the emails stored in the PED for identifying co-relations among received e-mails using an expert system (ES) with machine
learning capabilities to assist the user in analyzing and preparing replies,
preparing a reply template using a reply template generator (RTG),
storing the email replies in said PED,
configuring said PED and said ES using an personalized email database configurator (PEC) for updation.
The above method further includes:
storing of the received and sent e-mails in a mailbox (MB) within said PED,
storing the result of the analysis by said expert system in New Knowledge Base (NKB) in the said PED.
The above method further includes storage of personal data profile of the user, calendar of appointments/meetings, current job contents in said PED.
The above method further includes the accessing of said PED over a network so as to make it useful to a travelling user.
The above method further includes the accessing of said PED through appropriate facilities including palm pilots.
The above method further includes:
optionally generating the reply template,
selecting mail type on which to generate reply template e.g. one-liner, short, medium long replies,
enabling/disabling history search and intelligent reply template generation for specific type of mails for short mails,
enabling/disabling history search and intelligent reply template generation for specific type of mails for cc""ed type or bcc""ed type or mails sent to newsgroups,
specifying history search and intelligent reply template generation parameters like:
whether to search on subject and/or sender,
time period in which the messages need to be searched for,
type of message contents to be included/excluded,
scheduling deletion of mails from the MB and NKB,
scheduling sending of mails,
specifying latest first or oldest first while generating relevant intelligent reply,
specifying limits on inclusion of older reply contentsxe2x80x94time period wise, volume wise and bandwidth wise,
specifying criteria for inclusion/exclusion of keywords,
providing access to multiple PEDs at various locations over the network,
providing on-the-fly exclusion/inclusion of original mail and reply contents including the various levels of replies and counter-replies by the user through said PEC.
The above method further includes displaying said reply template on the screen by said RTG based on searches conducted within the NKB in said PED.
The above method further includes displaying of:
the mail received R1,
reply sent to R1-S1,
reply received on S1-R2,
reply sent to R2-S2,
reply received on S2-R3 . . .
by said RTG, serially and in chronological sequence, individually or in groups of R1, R2, R3 or S1, S2, S3 or in any combination requested by the user, either in configurable colors and/or with changed font type and size.
The above method further includes viewing and searching of the database by said RTG for relevant emails/messages with:
the same subject,
the same sender and same subject
the same subject and any one of the recipients listed in the cc: list or the To: list and various other similar combinations.
The said reply template is in the same format in which said attachments have been received.
The above method further includes generation of co-relations and new associations by said ES using state of art and state of the practice techniques of NLP, AI, machine learning.
The above method further includes searching said PED by said ES for co-relations amongst e-mails received
sender wise,
senders within a particular timeframe,
thread wise or subject wise,
sender and subject wise,
sender, subject and date wise,
sender, keyword wise.
In a computing system, a system to handle large volume of e-mail received from a plurality of senders intelligently, by automatically processing each email based on a pre-determined classification system and stored information, comprising:
means for receiving and sending the electronic mails,
means for parsing the electronic mail header to capture keywords for the purpose of identifying the sender, the subject and specific key words and/or phrases,
means for parsing the electronic mail body including attachments if any, for keywords and/or phrases for purpose of categorizing the e-mail for response,
means for storing the said received emails in a personalized email database (PED),
means for analyzing the emails stored in the PED for identifying co-relations among received e-mails using an expert system (ES) with machine learning capabilities to assist the user in analyzing and preparing replies,
means for preparing a reply template using a reply template generator (RTG),
means for storing the email replies in said PED,
means for configuring said PED and said ES using an personalized email database configurator (PEC) for updation.
The above system further includes:
means for storing the received and sent e-mails in a mailbox (MB) within said PED,
means for storing the result of the analysis by said expert system in New Knowledge Base (NKB) in the said PED.
The above system further includes means for storing personal data profile of the user, calendar of appointments/meetings, current job contents in said PED.
The above system further includes the means for accessing said PED over a network so as to make it useful to a travelling user.
The above system further includes the means for accessing said PED through appropriate facilities including palm pilots.
The above system further includes means for allowing the user through said PEC to:
optionally generate the reply template,
select mail type on which to generate reply template e.g. one-liner, short, medium long replies,
enable/disable history search and intelligent reply template generation for specific type of mails for short mails,
enable/disable history search and intelligent reply template generation for specific type of mails for cc""ed type or bcc""ed type or mails sent to newsgroups,
specify history search and intelligent reply template generation parameters like,
whether to search on subject and/or sender,
time period in which the messages need to be searched for,
type of message contents to be inicluded/excluded
schedule deletion of mails from the MB and NKB,
schedule sending of mails,
specify latest first or oldest first while generating relevant intelligent reply,
specify limits on inclusion of older reply contentsxe2x80x94time period wise, volume wise and bandwidth wise,
specify criteria for inclusion/exclusion of keywords,
provide access to multiple PEDs at various locations over the network,
provide on-the-fly exclusion/inclusion of original mail and reply contents including the various levels of replies and counter-replies.
The above system further includes means for displaying said reply template on the screen by said RTG based on searches conducted within the NKB in said PED
The above system further includes means for displaying:
the mail received R1,
reply sent to R1-S1,
reply received on S1-R2,
reply sent to R2-S2,
reply received on S2-R3 . . .
by said RTG, serially and in chronological sequence, individually or in groups of R1, R2, R3 or S1, S2, S3 or in any combination requested by the user, either in configurable colors and/or with changed font type and size.
The above system further includes means for viewing and searching of the database by said RTG for relevant emails/messages with:
the same subject,
the same sender and same subject,
the same subject and any one of the recipients listed in the cc: list or the To: list and various other similar combinations.
The above system further includes means for generating co-relations and new associations by said ES using state of art and state of the practice techniques of NLP, AI, machine learning.
The above system further includes means for searching said PED by said ES for co-relations amongst e-mails received
sender wise,
senders within a particular timeframe,
thread wise or subject wise,
sender and subject wise,
sender, subject and date wise,
sender, keyword wise.
A computer program product comprising computer readable program code stored on computer readable storage medium embodied therein for causing a computer to handle large volume of e-mail received from a plurality of senders intelligently, said computer program code comprising:
computer readable program code means configured for receiving and sending the electronic mails,
computer readable program code means configured for parsing the electronic mail header to capture keywords for the purpose of identifying the sender, the subject and specific key words and/or phrases
computer readable program code means configured for parsing the electronic mail body including attachments if any, for keywords and/or phrases for purpose of categorizing the e-mail for response,
computer readable program code means configured for storing the said received emails in a personalized email database (PED),
computer readable program code means configured for analyzing the emails stored in the PED for identifying co-relations among received e-mails using an expert system (ES) with machine learning capabilities to assist the user in analyzing and preparing replies,
computer readable program code means configured for preparing a reply template using a reply template generator (RTG),
computer readable program code means configured for storing the email replies in said PED.
computer readable program code means for configuring said PED and said ES using an personalized email database configurator (PEC) for updation.
The above computer program product further includes:
computer readable program code means configured for storing of the received and sent e-mails in a mailbox (MB) within said PED,
computer readable program code means configured for storing the result of the analysis by said expert system in New Knowledge Base (NKB) in the said PED.
The above computer program product further includes computer readable program code means configured for storage of personal data profile of the user, calendar of appointments/meetings, current job contents in said PED.
The above computer program product further includes computer readable program code means configured for accessing said PED over a network so as to make it useful to a travelling user.
The above computer program product further includes computer readable program code means configured for accessing said PED through appropriate facilities including palm pilots.
The above computer program product further includes computer readable program code means configured for allowing the user through said PEC to:
optionally generate the reply template,
select mail type on which to generate reply template e.g. one-liner, short, medium long replies,
enable/disable history search and intelligent reply template generation for specific type of mails for short mails,
enable/disable history search and intelligent reply template generation for specific type of mails for cc""ed type or bcc""ed type or mails sent to newsgroups,
specify history search and intelligent reply template generation parameters like,
whether to search on subject and/or sender,
time period in which the messages need to be searched for,
type of message contents to be included/excluded,
schedule deletion of mails from the MB and NKB,
schedule sending of mails,
specify latest first or oldest first while generating relevant intelligent reply,
specify limits on inclusion of older reply contentsxe2x80x94time period wise, volume wise and bandwidth wise,
specify criteria for inclusion/exclusion of keywords,
provide access to multiple PEDs at various locations over the network,
provide on-the-fly exclusion/inclusion of original mail and reply contents including the various levels of replies and counter-replies.
The above computer program product further includes computer readable program code means configured for displaying said reply template on the screen by said RTG based on searches conducted within the NKB in said PED.
The above computer program product further includes computer rebadable program code configured means for displaying of:
the mail received R1
reply sent to R1-S1
reply received on S1-R2
reply sent to R2-S2
reply received on S2-R3 . . .
by said RTG, serially and in chronological sequence, individually or in groups of R1, R2, R3 or S1, S2, S3 or in any combination requested by the user, either in configurable colors and/or with changed font type and size.
The above computer program product further includes computer readable program code means configured for viewing and searching of the database by said RTG for relevant emails/messages with:
the same subject,
the same sender and same subject
the same subject and any one of the recipients listed in the cc: list or the To: list and various other similar combinations.
The above computer program product further includes computer readable program code means configured for generating of co-relations and new associations by said ES using state of art and state of the practice techniques of NLP, AI, machine learning.
The above computer program product further includes computer readable program code means configured for searching the said PED by said ES for co-relations amongst e-mails received
sender wise,
senders within a particular timeframe,
thread wise or subject wise,
sender and subject wise,
sender, subject and date wise,
sender, keyword wise.